Grimm Season 2 launches with strong episode

American McGee's new season of Grimm is launching this week, but will the …

Here at Ars, we've been fans of American McGee's Grimm ever since Ben got to play around with a preview build of the first episode. So far, we've actually been pretty impressed withthe games we've gotten to review. McGee's studio, Spicy Horse, has proven a distinct knack for retelling fairy tales, in large part due to McGee's passion for the genre.

"I really enjoy working with these ancient fantasy and fairy tale narratives," said McGee in a recent interview with Ars. "There are a lot of interesting and evocative themes in these stories. If I spent the rest of my game-making career focused on the fairy tale genre I’d never run out of stories and likely not get bored."

The first season wrapped up back in September, and the developers over at Spicy Horse have taken the time off to work on producing Season Two, which will feature a number of game tweaks based on feedback they received from players. And now, the second season is launching with a Halloween-themed version of The Master Thief.

"We’ve been listening to player feedback and making changes everywhere," said McGee , "you’ll see improvements to the UI, the power-ups, the level design, and the narrative delivery. We’ve cut out a lot of the more annoying or unpolished ideas that were seen in the early episodes. And we’ve focused on what attracted players to the game – things like meaningful changes in the environments, characters, and story, as well as more platform-like and challenging game play."

So what, specifically, has changed since last season? Mostly, it boils down to improvements in artistic style. This is obvious from the start, as the introductory puppet show is far more elaborate than what we got to see in the past. While everything in the episode still looks like it's a candy-coated dream populated by nightmarish toys, there's a lot more intricacy to the design of the levels we ran Grimm through.

Of course, this isn't really all that surprising, given how customizable the Unreal Engine 3 is. Instead of drastic changes to the environment that occur at key moments, the conversion from light to dark is much more subtle this time around: as more of the world gets converted, the backgrounds (such as the skyline) seem to adapt in real time, becoming darker and featuring roving spotlight imagery. However, the coolest visual trick in The Master Thief comes at the end of each level, when Grimm reaches a darkness level high enough to trigger the final butt-stomping point: the game turns black and white while film grain also flicks up, making the whole sequence seem like it's something out of an old horror film.

The horror flick theme is actually a large part of the episode. The Master Thief's story is actually rather different than what previous episodes have presented. Instead of Grimm simply corrupting one of the original Grimm Brothers' stories, our favorite little troll decides that the initial story is rather unsatisfying and depressing; subsequently, he turns The Master Thief into an action/horror tale comparable to the best B movies out there.

What was originally a rather unexciting story about a young man who commits three "impossible" thefts in order to earn his godfather's respect suddenly becomes far more entertaining when the titular hero becomes a badass monster hunter, and zombies, werewolves, and vampires get thrown into the mix. Somehow, a simple twist has worked wonders for the original lackluster plot. But the best part of the story is, actually, its humor. Before, there was a lot of sarcasm that didn't always quite hit the mark, but this time the jokes come fast and furious, and a lot of laughter was heard as we played through the game.

The gameplay itself doesn't really feel all that different from last season, but it does seem a bit tighter and more refined. Moving Grimm around the world seems smoother than it did before, with the platforming sections far less onerous than they used to be. Some of the power-ups provided in the game also make certain sections far less daunting than they first appear, which adds a mild puzzle-solving element to the game where there didn't seem to be one before. Finally, the major problem in all the games we played last season–earning the highest darkness level possible–seems to have been solved. This time around, achieving a ranking of "Vile" is much more achievable, which makes things far less frustrating.

Overall, this new season of Grimm seems to be taking what was already a good thing and making it better. Now that the developers have had some time to work on their product, things feel a little more focused, and this refinement is promising that Season Two will be great. The Master Thief will be available for free download during the first 24 hours of its release on GameTap, and then non-GameTap subscribers will be able to purchase the episode through either GameTap or other services afterward.